BP and Environmental Defense Fund have announced a three-year strategic commitment to advance technologies and practices to reduce methane emissions from the global oil and gas supply chain.

The agreement enables joint collaboration on projects that test technologies and emerging strategies to continue to improve methane management. Working with universities and third-party experts, the initiative has the potential for broad applicability to help the entire oil and gas industry significantly reduce this potent greenhouse gas.

“BP is taking a leading role in addressing methane emissions, and this collaboration with EDF is another important step forward for us and for our industry,” said Bernard Looney, BP’s Upstream chief executive. “We’ve made great progress driving down emissions across our own business, including meeting our industry-leading methane intensity target of 0.2%, but there is much more work to do and partnering with the committed and capable team at EDF will help us develop and share best practices.”

“BP’s commitment to push the next frontier of methane technology and practice is important to prove out solutions that oil and gas companies can use to accelerate emission reductions. The scale of the methane challenge is enormous, but so is the opportunity. Whether natural gas can play a constructive role in the energy transition depends on aggressive measures to reduce emissions that include methane,” said Fred Krupp, EDF president.

“BP took such a step today. EDF and BP don’t agree on everything, but we’re finding common ground on methane. BP has shown early ambition to lead on methane technology. We hope to see more as BP delivers on its own stringent methane goal and we work together to spread solutions industrywide,” Mr Krupp added.

EDF will not receive any funding from BP, consistent with EDF’s strict policy prohibiting receipt of funds from energy companies and corporate collaborators. Rather, BP and EDF are working to identify third-party analytical and technological demonstration projects, and BP will assist with funding.

The collaboration will also facilitate industry dialogue about the best practices to monitor and reduce emissions. EDF will provide input on science, technology and policy. These areas of work build on BP’s methane reduction target; EDF’s extensive methane research, business analyses and other innovation projects; and both organisations’ participation in the Methane Guiding Principles, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at broad engagement to continually reduce emissions globally.